How to get a summer holiday if you run a small business

Allison Greenland remembers the time when she almost succeeded at taking a summer holiday.

Except her clients were constantly ringing her when she was at the beach with her family.

There was the time the family travelled to the US, meeting relatives by day and writing up business documents by night.

Allison Greenland owner of Leap into Literacy.Credit:Wolter Peeters

“It’s nice that I can travel, but it’s also this thing where I can never leave my job,” she says.

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“So when we go away, the reality of it is I still have to take my laptop and I’m constantly checking emails and taking phone calls.”

The problem with holidays

Holidays are notoriously hard for small business owners to take. Making the arrangements necessary to get away for a week or two in summer is simply too difficult, especially for those who experience their busiest periods across the festive season.

A Deloitte report for Westpac found 63 per cent of Australia’s small business owners say they won’t have chance to relax over the holiday season and 58 per cent say they’ll miss out on spending time with family and friends.

Allison Greenland has struggled to take holidays. Credit:Wolter Peeters

Greenland, owner of Sydney’s Leap into Literacy children’s education centres, says she’s determined to take a two-week holiday this summer. Her business is now four years old with an annual turnover of $100,000, so she feels more enabled to step away.

“Being able to hand over your baby, which is your business, is not always an easy thing to do,” she explains.

“There’s definitely been times where I wished that I had delegated a little bit more to my assistant and staff to handle things, which is now what I’m doing.

“Being able to hand things over, knowing it doesn’t need to be all me anymore. My staff are getting to the stage where they can do a lot themselves.”

Handing over

Handing the reins over to other staff who don’t have as much of a stake in the business is not just not feasible for many small business owners, says small business consultant Tim Roberts.

“Owners, particularly those in businesses like restaurants or coffee shops with a relatively high turnover in the nature of employing people, are reluctant to trust, depend and pass on the knowledge of how to do things like open and close and do the banking,” he says.

“We’ve got many clients who go basically years without taking a proper break from the business.”

However, Roberts says there are strategies small business owners can employ to make sure they rest and refresh over summer.

The first is ensuring they have documented policies and procedures prepared so stand-in staff can refer to when in doubt.

“It doesn’t necessarily mean you have to file every how-to, but if you list every major and sub task in your business, then obviously the onus on the owner should drop away significantly because that resource is there and they don’t need to be contacted all the time,” he says.

An obvious step for any business, no matter the industry, is hiring and retaining the right people. A competent and trustworthy team is arguably the best resource any small business owner can have. By creating incentives and KPIs, owners can also ensure their staff really care about how the business performs when they’re not around.

“If you know what your average sales are when you plan to take a break, you can have a financial or non-financial incentive that’s linked to if the staff outperform or the business does better while the owner is away, then that person can share in the success,” Roberts says.

“So if you’re not in the business there’s still someone there that has something other than their agreed hourly rate so there’s someone working on your behalf.”

And of course, cloud-based accounting technology such as Xero and QuickBooks makes it easy for small business owners to keep an eye on the finances when they’re not actually at work.

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Shutting down

But for regional law firm owner and solicitor Jacqui Brauman, the best way to switch off at Christmas is to shut down.

Brauman’s TBA Law, which has a turnover of $750,000 per annum and employs nine staff, closes for two weeks.

“We work out as a team what our last day will be and these discussions start in about September or October,” she explains.

“Then in mid-November, all our correspondence and emails have a notice on them, wishing everyone a Merry Christmas and informing people the dates we will be closed.